Editorial: Trailers for sale or rent: FEMA's 'King of the Road'

Looking for a good deal on a travel trailer? You might want to wait a few months, and then look around the Gulf Coast. There should be some real good deals in the making.

FEMA is taking barbs again -- this time for its intended purchase of 125,000 travel trailers, to be used to house victims of the Hurricane Katrina. It has already purchased over 95,000 -- retail -- from private lots. The cost thus far is $1.3 billion. This, at a time when officials say there are around 1 million empty apartments available in the region.

It's not just the cost of the trailers, as opposed to existing housing. FEMA has also had to buy and build "parks" to keep the trailers in. The first one, built 90 miles outside of New Orleans, cost $22 million to prepare the site for the trailers. At $38,000 a lot, that's more that twice the cost of the trailers themselves.

In addition to the cost of the land and trailers, the government has run power and telephone lines to the areas. It has built a sewer plant. And for the next 18 months, it will be obliged to provide meals and security for this vagabond city -- all free of charge.

And after that time, the plan is for the government to pay to tear it all down.

Critics say that FEMA could and should have spread the people regionally in existing housing rather than building these interment camps without walls. The rentals would certainly have been cheaper than starting from scratch and would have provided a financial boost to the hundreds of towns and cities the program would have affected. Spreading out the refugees would have better allowed for employment of the displaced.

Authorities say that the purchase of trailers by FEMA is the largest single order in the agency's history -- by six-fold. The bill will be $1.7 billion.

We still have thousands of victims of the 2004 hurricanes in "temporary" housing in southwest Florida. How long the effort in Louisiana and Mississippi will go on is anyone's guess.

But it seems apparent that by the time the government finds places to put the trailers it has already bought, New Orleans will be put back together and celebrating Mardi Gras again. Then we'll either see a huge government sale of "nearly-new" travel trailers for private adventurers. Or perhaps Florida could buy up a few thousand. With its growth, we'll need plenty of portables for our schools. And with the new class size amendment gearing up, these little classrooms on wheels may be just about the right size to accommodate it.